Our Brand is Crisis - Carville, Bolivia, and the Limits of Democracy

While in New York, we caught Our Brand is Crisis a fascinating documentary about the election of "Goni" in Bolivia. In it, Rachel Boynton films (with surprisingly complete access) the participation of Clinton's and John Kerry's consultants, Greenberg Carville Shrum, in the successful campaign of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada ("Goni") to gain a plurality of 22%, and thus the presidency of that fascinating country.

This is no simple tale of political banter, though. The film starts with a clash between government troops and Bolivian protestors in the final days of Goni's presidency, before he resigned and fled to suburban Washington, DC, and that image of disaster colors the whole project. This film forces the viewer, in a direct and compelling manner, to face the consequences of the political game.

Other reviewers have seen the film as a work demonstrating that American-style political consulting can bring about disastrous results in other cultures. From Chris Barsanti, "What the film ably shows is how a band of Washington consultants can contribute to bloodshed and near societal collapse in a Third World nation whose politics can't be reduced to the same Beltway template now being exported around the world." From Timothy Knight, "Without ever getting strident or sanctimonious, the film vividly demonstrates the potential hazards of trying to export American-style democracy overseas." Those reviewers miss the point, as demonstrated by the clueless but on-to-something Kyle Smith of the New York Post - "Why shouldn't Bolivia be entitled to sophisticated polling advice?"

The problem exposed by the movie is a problem at the heart of democracy, and one which is exacerbated where a candidate can achieve leadership with a 22% plurality. At one point, Goni, while still on the campaign trail, dismisses the thought of relying on the voice of the people to decide a difficult and technical question of how to export Bolivia's vast stores of natural gas. Later in the film, Carville muses on the fact that Goni's popularity peaked on the day of the election, and that had the election taken place the day after or the day before, he may have lost. And, Carville admits, that sort of peak is like a climax - it's tough to control exactly when it will come.

So, on the day of the election, 22% of Bolivia's people happened to choose Goni, but he never had a majority of public support. After imposing an income tax that impacted the already-poor, and agreeing to export natural gas through hated neighbor Chile, Goni became the target of protests and demonstrations, led by those who came within a few percentage points of gaining his precarious seat of power.

"Our Brand is Crisis" shows some of the limits of democracy. Where, as in the United States, only a minority of people select the leadership, where is the guaranty that the true will of the people will be victorious? Beyond that, how does the will of the people play into solving complex issues that the average voter may not even be able to articulate, much less solve?

Uncomfortably, the villain of this challenging documentary is not Goni, or the political consultants, or Goni's opponents. The boy we see in a pool of blood at the beginning of the film was killed by a failure in democracy.